52: When The Past Kicks The Door In
Trigger Warning (Mentions of OD)
Several Years Ago,
KILLIAN (Age 23)
The music was deafening. Gold lights flickered across the penthouse, flashing on the glass walls and bouncing off empty bottles and smeared lipstick on crystal ashtrays. There were people everywhere. They were drunk, high, fucking in corners, and laughing as if the world wasn't rotting beneath their designer heels.
And then there was her.
Arabella.
She was curled in my lap, her dress slipping off one shoulder. Her lips were stained red as though she'd been drinking blood. Maybe she had. Wouldn't have surprised me.
Her fingers traced the tattoo on my chest, the one I'd gotten after the first time I’d almost died.
"You know what I hate about you?" she whispered against my neck.
I didn't answer. I was too far gone. The drugs were kicking in, and I was becoming sluggish.
She giggled.
"You always think you can outrun it, Killian. The pain. The noise. The emptiness. But you can't. Not without me."
I looked at her through hazy vision. My heart was pounding too hard and too fast. I couldn't remember how many pills I'd taken. She'd slipped a few more between my lips an hour ago, smiling like a child offering me candy.
"I don't want to run," I murmured, my voice slurred. "I just want the silence."
Arabella's pupils were blown wide. She kissed me hard, her movements messy.
"Then let's die together," she whispered. "You and me. Just like always. Crash and burn, baby."
The floor tilted beneath us. Or maybe it was just me.
I blinked, and suddenly I was on the bed, Arabella's bare skin pressed against mine. Her laugh was echoing from somewhere far away.
My chest tightened and my vision blurred. My pulse was too slow. Or maybe too fast. I couldn't tell. And then, the line between agony and bliss blurred until it all felt like I was floating.
Something was awfully wrong. And still, I didn't stop her or myself because this was most natural to us.
We fed each other poison and called it love.
I don't know how long I was unconscious.
But I woke up to a bitter taste in my mouth and the echo of someone screaming my name.
Arabella was on the floor beside me. Her lips were blue. The paramedics were already there. Someone had called them. Definitely not her or me.
We were supposed to go together. But she lived. And so did I. Barely.
I didn't look at her when they wheeled her out on the stretcher. But I remember the last thing she said before the doors were shut.
"If you leave me, Killian... I'll come back from the grave. And I'll take you with me."
....
…Back to the present…
"It's... Arabella," Ethan said, but I wasn't surprised.
Two days ago, she'd literally sent me a warning message.
I'd deleted it before the temptation to reply and tell her to fuck off won. Because I knew she would undoubtedly use it against me.
Arabella didn't haunt silently. She liked noise. And when she knocked, she wasn't asking for entry, she was warning you that she was already inside.
So I wasn't surprised.
But I was furious.
I was furious that she dared to walk back into my world now. Especially when I was barely holding together the last goddamn pieces of what mattered most to me right now.
"Let the bitch in," Seraphina hissed beside me.
My gaze rested on her. The rage in her voice didn't unsettle me. It matched the exact rhythm of my pulse.
But something in my chest tightened. Because she didn't know the depth of what was coming. She didn't know what Arabella truly was.
I needed to armor myself. Internally.
Arabella wasn't just an ex. Or a mistake. She was the one who had loved me so obsessively she'd rather see us dead together than alive apart.
And once upon a time, I'd let her in.
Back then, I wanted to die with her. But fate had other plans. I survived. And that haunted her.
She came back the next week like nothing happened.
And I took her back.
Again. And again.
Until Seraphina.
The woman who pulled me out of the fire. The woman Arabella never stopped hating for it.
So yeah. I wasn't surprised she was back. She'd always promised she'd return. Even if she had to claw her way out of hell.
The doors creaked open slowly. And then she stepped in.
The air shifted the second she crossed the threshold. She was wearing a red coat that matched the colour of her lipstick. Her heels clicked against the marble loudly. Her dyed red hair was longer now, and her brown eyes were darker and hungrier. Her skin was porcelain pale, flawless in the way only the damned looked beautiful.
She was still the woman who had once made me believe that love meant drowning together in a bathtub of blood. But I was thirty now, and she was thirty-two. Things weren’t the same.
And yet, when our eyes met, the memories came rushing in. She smiled. It was the kind that made my skin crawl.
"Killian," she drawled. "You didn't forget me after all."
Seraphina didn't move.
She didn't have to.
The tension coming off her was nuclear. Her expression was unreadable. But her presence was brewing a fucking tornado.
Arabella's gaze flicked to her. And her smile widened.
"Oh," she said softly. "So it's true. The prodigal whore remembers now."
In a blink, Seraphina was no longer seated on her chair.
She was in front of her, her fist cocked back.
I caught her wrist midair.
"Not yet," I muttered. "Calm down."
Arabella chuckled, amused, as though she knew exactly how deep her claws still ran beneath my skin.
"I missed this," she whispered, turning her gaze back to me. "The chaos. The fire. The fucking madness of it all."
"You don't belong here," I said coldly.
Arabella tilted her head, mock confusion dancing in her features. "But I do, darling. You promised. 'Till death do us part, remember? I died for you, Killian. Or did you forget that while playing house with your little assassin?"
Seraphina yanked her hand out of my grip.
"Don't talk like you understand sacrifice. You died because you wanted to take him with you. I saved him from that. From you."
Arabella's grin turned feral. "You think he stopped loving me just because you got on your knees? That's cute."
I stepped between them then. Because I knew how this could go.
Arabella wasn't here to make amends. She was here to detonate everything we were still trying to rebuild, piece by piece.
I looked her in the eyes. "What do you want?"
She blinked slowly.
Then she leaned in close and whispered. "To collect what you owe."
Her hand dropped to her coat. She pulled something out and tossed it on the coffee table.
A photo.
My blood ran cold in my veins.
Seraphina stepped forward and froze mid-motion.
The photo was a little old and water-damaged. It was a photo of a newborn.
No.
It couldn't be.
"You thought I died that night. But something else lived. Something you left behind."
She turned to look at Seraphina, her eyes glinting with something far more lethal than jealousy.
"Did he tell you, darling? That while he was trying to kill himself beside me, he also made a life?"
My heart stopped.
Seraphina stiffened, and for a moment, she wasn’t breathing.
Arabella smiled. “Oops."
And just like that, the past wasn't knocking anymore.
It had kicked the fucking door in.